In 1930s Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the Jewish residents are beginning to move away from the Chicken Hill neighborhood where they’ve always lived with their Black neighbors. But Chona Ludlow refuses to leave the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store that her father established even though her husband Moshe would like to live in a neighborhood where the streets aren’t muddy and there is running water and sewage.
Chona is beloved by most of her neighbors for her kindness. She runs a tab for anyone who needs it and hands out marbles and small toys to the neighborhood children.
There is always some kind of trouble on Chicken Hill. Chona herself constantly writes letters to city officials complaining of unfairness to various Jewish or Black residents. But trouble from higher up arrives when Moshe’s trusted friend and employee, Nate Timblin, and his wife Addie take in his 12-year-old deaf nephew Dodo, whose parents have died. The trouble starts when Dodo stays out of school because he can’t hear the instruction and is being mocked. Officials decide to institutionalize him by placing him in a horrible insane asylum called Pennhurst under the assumption that since he can’t hear, he’s an idiot.
Nate, who is Black, asks Moshe if he will hide Dodo at the store. So Dodo moves in and helps out at the store and hides in the cellar if the authorities come by. But word gets out that Chona is hiding Dodo.
A combination of criminal and tragic events result in Dodo being caught. Can he be rescued from forces against him, including the racist Doc Roberts, a prominent member of society and also of the Ku Klux Klan?
McBride tells a great story, peopled with lots of colorful characters. There’s a lot going on in Chicken Hill, and it makes for fun and sometimes touching reading.
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What? Me Read? 
Lots of people seem to love this book, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I had the chance to blind read the opening, and there were SO many Judaism related mistakes (in just the opening few hundred words), I knew I couldn’t read it. Oh well… Not every book is for everyone.
Oh, that’s too bad.
I like the sound of this and it’s a great title!
I didn’t realise the KKK operated in Pennsylvania. I thought they were restricted to the South.
Oh, no. I was surprised when years ago I was looking at the yearbooks for my grandfather and grandmother’s university (about 1918 or so). There it was pictured with all the clubs on campus. Pretty shocking for us. (My grandfather was not a member.)
I also didn’t know they had actual clubs on campuses! I always imagined them as a sort of secret society, operating in the shadows. I must see if I can find some kind of history of them – clearly my impression of them is totally wrong, probably based on films and TV rather than actual fact.
I think they sort of operate in the shadows now, and certainly I believe are mostly in the South, but I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in small towns knew who their members were. I lived in the South for 30 years but in big cities, and didn’t run across it at all. I know I had a girlfriend from Louisiana who said that of the people in her small town.
They were in Illinois then, by the way, not the South.
I am tempted by this book for sure!
Thanks for sharing your review with the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
Thanks, Marg!